Free Lunch

Split into starters, mains, 'Just Desserts' and so on, Free Lunch aims to dish up enough digestible economic theory to ensure survival if the chatter at your middle-class dinner party turns to the financial issues of the day, starting with house prices. For the most part, Smith, the Sunday Times's economics editor, is an amiable and talented dining companion. He can occasionally patronise ('Micro is small, macro is big) and the menu trope does get tiresome - a tapas selection might have been more appropriate given Smith's tendency for digression - but there's a good glossary and list of 'Post-Prandial Reading'. Perhaps ominously, one of those offering praise on the back cover is Gordon Brown.